


After the Storm

by prettyraven



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Pete's World, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Slice of Life, Vignettes, non-linear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:19:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23059876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyraven/pseuds/prettyraven
Summary: She's sitting in cold sand on a beach in Norway and she should be happy, but she's supposed to fix him. (There's no handbook for this)Ongoing, numerous slices of life exploring the aftermath of Journey's End and the life Rose builds with the Metacrisis.
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Kudos: 18





	1. Prologue

Prologue

Everything feels foggy in this moment and she’s not just thinking of the weather. There’s a special sort of haze, an unerring sense of disappointment winding deep into her bones. 

She’s come so far, too far, some might say, and ended up almost just where she left off. This time, there’s no way back. Around her, her mother hovers, anxious. 

Beyond her immediate line of sight, she knows he’s there. Knows that she only has to turn and look a few inches over her shoulder to see his face, see the face that’s been in her dreams for months on end. Only has to say something to hear his voice.

They wait for her to make a move, a decision, to scream or cry or just comment on something.

She thinks of all the wasted jumps, all the times she strapped a dimension cannon to her wrist and hurled herself across a universe, all the tally lines she marked down on a bit of paper that got tucked into the edge of her mirror. She’s never been able to count them because there’s too many identical lines one after the other. 

She’s sitting in cold sand on a beach in Norway and she should be happy, she knows this, but she’s supposed to fix him.

There’s no handbook for this.


	2. Chapter 2

In Pete’s version of London, they decide to move in together right away. It just makes sense, they don’t really want to be apart from each other again. The Doctor feels nothing but lucky. Rose feels like she’s faltering on some lifeline she didn’t know she was going to get.

He has nothing – literally nothing beyond the clothes on his back. The Tylers provide for him. Jackie stocks up the kitchen with tea and biscuits; Pete takes him shopping for a few essentials. Rose furnishes everything else for him, first in the little flat she lives in. Goes out one morning to get a few bits and pieces, adds in a second toothbrush to her cart; a new can of shaving foam and razors; ups the fruit and vegetables.

It chafes against the Doctor, a bit, because he’d like to pay something. His other self has spent centuries being the provider, in a way, always with a bedroom on the TARDIS somewhere for a new guest to sleep. Always had it fitted out with whatever the current companion needed, furnishings, home knickknacks… now, he doesn’t have so much as a toothbrush to bring to the arrangement. He doesn’t have money or a line of credit to pay them back, even though he knows full well how the offer would be received.

Doesn’t even have a job to start _thinking_ about repayments.

They end up getting a house together. Rose has earned and saved a lot from five years of working at Torchwood and no major social life to speak of, so the deposit is all on her. They pretend not to notice that Pete pads the deposit so the mortgage will be shorter, and that Jackie sneaks in approximately double the linen and manchester at the last minute.

Two bedrooms, at first, because Rose isn’t used to sharing her space with anyone but her family and the Doctor doesn’t have any experience being in this body with anyone at all. He doesn’t know how it feels to sleep sharing space with someone; doesn’t even know what his dreams would be like if he were to sleep beyond a nap.

Rose puts in a word with Pete who puts in a word in the physics team at Torchwood and the next day the Doctor is scuffing his feet into brand-new Converses that feel a little stiff and plasticky, pretending to ignore the fact that Rose is hiring a painter to redo the bathroom and the quoted price was 15% less than he expected.

He gets through the interview beautifully, of course, sees how the interviewer’s face goes slack and then fills in with something like wonder when he begins expanding on one of his favourite theories… anyway, he gets the job and begins the next day. He’s been standing still for a week and already he’s itching to get on and do something. If he can’t be flying the TARDIS to her next destination, he can at least make himself useful.

The paychecks are too much. He’s a doctorate in an entry-level body and no _way_ should he be getting this, and paying this little tax. He’s certain, but when he raises it with the Tylers they all play the same sort of game. Rose thinks he’s brilliant, kisses the back of his knuckles when he broaches trying to work out a lower rate of pay, tries to figure out where all the excess money can go.

He opens a bank account the next business day.

Jackie laughs it off, and he can see the thought on her face: _when did anyone ever complain about having too much money?_ He remembers that she was a widow who raised her child on a council estate for nineteen years, thought that getting a few thousand pounds compensation for your workplace blowing up would keep the wolf from the door. Jackie wasn’t born to this life – at least this Jackie wasn’t – but she has adapted remarkably. She was born to be a wealthy woman, he thinks one day, and she wears it well. After the novelty wore off and she’d spent all the money she fancied without ever really denting Pete’s account, she settled into a sensible way of buying as the whim arose.

He goes to Pete then. Pete just tells him that he’s earned it, and gives him a few general thoughts on saving for emergency, paying the mortgage faster. It’ll look after itself.

The money is still its own sort of foreign concept to the Doctor though, and he’s never had to be concerned about these issues. _Save for a rainy day. Keep three months’ wage stored up in case the day job doesn’t pan out. Get life insurance._

The Doctor has never needed life insurance.

So he works. He works at his highly-paid, undertaxed job, and does it well. Pay rises seem to come to him fast, embarrassing him when he tells Rose the new figure, but she suggests he adjust his finances proportionately, takes him out for fish and chips.

Rose works too, gets her own well-earned pay rise and they gain more money. He watches her spend money, not really ever having to think about it beyond a cursory considering of what she’s got on her at that moment in time, and wonders if he’ll ever be able to do the same.

Money seems to mean very little to the Tylers, both those who earned it through years of diligence and those who received it simply by being part of that family, and the Doctor sees the way they lavish it out on anyone. It’s not _just_ family, he sees later, but friends, and charity. If there’s an organization asking for donations, Rose and Jackie are two of the first in line to offer a sum that would feed a small family for a year. Rose tends to be humbler, he notices, giving an awkward little smile to the person receiving and asking for her name to be kept out of things.

The Doctor carries on quietly earning and keeping his money, and feels the worse for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come join me on twitter, where i sometimes tweet about fic and my other real-life works: @writeonepurl2


	3. Chapter 3

They get on with life.

Settle into a routine where they pretend nothing is amiss, there’s nothing unusual about this world. This is a world where Pete Tyler lives and Jackie Tyler died and was replaced by herself, where Rose Tyler fills in a role no-one knew needed to be filled.

The Doctor has so many questions they could burst from him, if he’d let them, but this world is one which has suddenly absorbed three entirely new people and the laws of humans don’t like to look _too_ closely. “Look too close and they’d go mad,” Rose observes one day. She’s right, the Doctor thinks.

They’re sitting in the breakfast nook, her drinking tea and him destroying a piece of toast with a fork. Neither has eaten so far, and somehow they are supposed to make this breakfast a habit. They’ve no groceries in yet, it’s the morning after they landed back in Pete’s London, and Rose has already apologized twice for her non-breakfasting habits. Normally, he has learned, she either sleeps overnight at Torchwood and eats in the café there, or she sleeps here and has a smoothie on the way out the door.

Nor does she do dinner, not the domestic way. There’s a few takeout containers in the fridge, labelled with what and when; another box is in the rubbish. Raw ingredients are few and far between.

He finishes on the piece of toast – doesn’t even know if he likes this bread, with its seven grains and unsalted butter. The _other_ version of him would be happy enough, he supposes, pleased just to be alive and in the novelty of being here on a day with no danger and safely in Rose’s home. Rose blinks at him, eyes going to his face (and he notes a tiny flinch, just a jolt in the façade) before bouncing to the fork and then to the toast.

She decides not to ask about if he’s eaten any of it. They don’t need her to be hectoring and fretting in the same way Jackie has been with her, fussed over Pete’s comments that Rose has sequestered herself in the labs for five days and only pausing for toast, noodles and tea. Despite the fact that she can now look across the table at the Doctor, he isn’t her Doctor. Not _really_. It causes a tiny trickle of something down her spine that she doesn’t care to identify, and so she doesn’t. Puts it out of her mind and mentally prepares a grocery list.

Pushes her chair back from the table and the Doctor gravitates to her immediately, hands fluttering uselessly, unsurely about her intent. They’ve never been in the same space and been so _still_ about it. There’s always been something to do, somewhere to run, some third party buffering any awkward tension.

She clears her throat, feels embarrassed even as she does it.

“I’m goin’ grocery shopping,” she announces. Her voice feels like it comes out too loud in the stillness of the room.

The Doctor’s face brightens. It’s something they can set in as a common ground, some way to resolve the tension even if they’re only discussing what brand of hand soap to get.

“I’ll just grab my coat then,” he says. Looks around for the trademark swishy brown coat that Janice Joplin – oh. It’s not here, because in this universe he doesn’t have a billowing coat.

They walk to the supermarket. It’s too nice of a day to drive and Rose doesn’t expect they’ll get too much stuff right away, so she stuffs her reusable bags into a handbag that looks like it should hold far less.

It’s an easy trip, though Rose has to persuade the Doctor he doesn’t need four bunches of bananas and promises to find a recipe for banana bread later. They get enough that Rose feels she won’t be embarrassed to have someone else look into her kitchen – somehow if someone ends up in there she always finds she has to sort of justify why it’s there if the maximum contents are a bunch of tea things and some biscuits.

In the end, she has fresh produce for the first time in months, and more things than she knows what to do with. They venture outside only to find the skies have darkened over and there’s an ominous quiet rumbling in the distance which the Doctor doesn’t attribute to a passing truck.

By the time they reach the end of the street, the skies have opened up and they’re both regretting not having a jacket. Rose grimaces as her trainers squelch through an unfortunate puddle that she can’t jump over without slipping, and glances up to find the Doctor tilting back his head, bags tangled on his arms to hold his hands out.

New sensation, she supposes, and wonders how the rain in this world feels compared to her original one. She waits quietly for him, and he comes back to earth when the rain drips into his eyes. He wipes it away on the back of his wrist and looks down at her, smiling the smile she’d so missed seeing.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks. Tentative. Careful.

She doesn’t find she has to stop too long to think, because she’s been wanting to be able to kiss him for so long and now he’s literally within arm’s reach. He ducks his head down to reach her and she feels the warmth of his face on hers.

He kisses her, and he realizes it’s their first real kiss. He wonders if she would rather be kissing the other one, warm and dry in the TARDIS where they never have to do grocery shopping. Maybe they’d be just home from an adventure, just saved a planet or had some near-death experience, and pulls away from her a little too quickly.

When he looks at her again, there's hurt written clear on her face. This was never going to be easy, neither of them expected it to be, but he’s sure he’s just made it twice as difficult.


	4. Chapter 4

He learns early on that Rose likes to run.

The door latches scrape back into place, and he props himself up on the mattress, peers at the glowing LED numbers. It’s two forty-eight in the morning, he registers, and flops down onto the mattress again.

Rose pads through the flat, and in his sleepy state he registers drawers opening and closing; a couple of bottle-caps clicking back into place; water running and then in their room, dimly, the soft thump of a bundle of clothes hitting the bottom of the laundry basket. She makes noise, the unselfconscious kind borne of months living alone and never having to worry about waking someone up.

At last, she clambers back into bed. He feels her over-warm from the run, but forces himself to lie still, let his shoulders drop, and begins counting galaxies again.

There’s a kiss pressed to the underside of his wrist, and then he is out.

In the morning – _proper_ morning, not almost three a.m., they sit over tea and he pages through the news. Banking magnate made another million… car crash… stock markets holding steady… theatre reviews… it’s mundane, but he takes each article in carefully. Jackie might like to know about the theatre program coming up, if she doesn’t already, and Pete has been dabbling in stocks for years.

He stores away the knowledge – stuff he never used to give more than a passing thought – and folds up the paper.

Considers how best to approach Rose’s early-hours excursions.

As if sensing his gaze, she looks up, catches his gaze and grins at him. It’s impossible not to smile back, not when she looks like she’s just had the best news she could hope for. Instead of ruining the peace, he hops up to put the kettle on again, watches as the steam swirls in the air.

They pass two or three days like this: Rose creeping out of bed before the Doctor wakes up, pounding her sneakers over the pavement and then slipping back into bed like she never left. Each night, the Doctor is woken, and each morning, he elects not to say anything.

Neither of them display distress to the other, or fatigue, and so on the eleventh day the Doctor finds Rose at the stove, swaying slightly. Catching her up, he swoops her into an armchair and tucks blankets around her, flicks off the stovetop.

She’s asleep by the time he gets back to the couch.

Rose wakes to find the Doctor curled on the couch, waiting patiently. It’s only been a half hour since she dozed off, and her neck is sore, and she feels she could go for round two of her nap.

Instead, the Doctor checks her hands in his (assures himself she is a comfortable, healthy temperature) and braces himself to ask.

“Why do you go running when you do?”

She pauses midway through fixing her blankets. Hadn’t realized he had noticed, had forgotten that the man before her has infinite experience being clever and observant and _of course_ he would notice.

“I… well, I got into the habit when I first moved here. An’ there was no-one around to say I couldn’t or shouldn’t, so when I couldn’t sleep I’d get up, walk or run around a while.” He notices her cheeks are pink, probably at embarrassment being found out, and her eyes are averted. She’s pleating the blanket between her fingers, sheepish.

 _Insomnia_ , the Doctor thinks automatically. Months spent on jumping across universes, he’s surprised sleep was the only function to falter. Wishes he could offer the TARDIS’ best medicine-cabinet offerings to ease her sleeplessness.

He straightens up instead, tucks up the blankets and smiles at her. “Right-o! You rest up here for now, get some more sleep.”

It doesn’t take much convincing beyond this. Rose drifts off, warm and comfortable, and the Doctor heads out for one of the nearby sports shops.

When he comes back, Rose is awake and idly making tea while she scrolls through some new emails, and he slips into their room to store his purchases. Rejoins her in the kitchen.

“D’you want some company next time you run?” he offers, ready to turn it into a quick joke if he needs to.

She hesitates, taps her fingers on the table in a quick one-two, one-two beat, nods to herself. “I’d like that.”

The next night, Rose slithers out of bed and nudges the Doctor awake. He rolls over to see her, dressed in workout clothes and sneakers, and tumbles out of bed to join her.

They run together, Rose with a quick pace and the Doctor working harder than he would like to keep up with her. Every so often, he finds himself slowing and looking around, convinced that the grey car over there is about to explode, or that the young woman with a cigarette in her hand is actually about to pull a weapon and detain them.

All throughout the run, he waits and looks over his shoulder for explosions and high-speed chases on foot, for the Judoon to descend, but they simply reach their destination. Rose does a few stretches, so he does the same, trying to not feel let down.

They make their way home along the same safe, peaceful route, and the Doctor tries not to let his disappointment show when Rose unlatches the door with no issue.

Inside, Rose heads to the bathroom and he listens to the now-familiar sounds as she rattles around in the cabinets and he readies for bed.

(so many hundreds of years of running for his life have ruined running for enjoyment)


End file.
